You’re about to start working on a new report or presentation. What’s the best way to get started? Where should you save your file? How do you find that file tomorrow, or next week, or next month? How do you protect yourself from the inconvenience (to put it mildly) of losing a document you’ve worked on for hours? These are just a few of the questions tackled in this sample chapter from Special Edition Using Microsoft Office 2003, Student-Teacher Edition.

Getting Organized (and Staying That Way)

You’re about to start working on a new report or presentation.
What’s the best way to get started? Where should you save your file? How
do you find that file tomorrow, or next week, or next month? How do you protect
yourself from the inconvenience (to put it mildly) of losing a document
you’ve worked on for hours?

Those are the questions we tackle in this chapter. Relax—we’re
not going to force you to change the way you handle your homework or your
projects. It helps if you can stick to a sensible file-naming strategy, and
you’ll have best results if you have a clear understanding of where and
how Office stores files. Whether you file every scrap of paper that goes across
your desk or just throw everything into a shoebox, Office has a set of tools for
you to use. At the end of this chapter, we introduce you to an amazing search
tool that can help you pick out any Office document, even if all you can
remember is a word or phrase it contained.